Plane crash near Clearwater airport kills two, injures one

CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP) -- Two people aboard a small airplane were killed Thursday afternoon when it crashed in a residential neighborhood near Clearwater Air Park, authorities said.

A third occupant of the plane was airlifted to a Tampa hospital with serious burns and broken bones, police said.

Police said the three victims were adult males from the area, but their names were not immediately released. Nobody on the ground was injured.

The twin-engine turboprop crashed and burst into flames in the long driveway in a community of large homes north of the single-runway airport.

Witnesses said the Cessna Navajo was on approach, trying to land in heavy rain, when it "seemed to fall from the sky" at about 4:30 p.m., said Marianne Pasha, public information officer of the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.

Two men who saw the crash, including one who lives in the neighborhood, rushed to the flaming wreckage to try to help, Pasha said.

She said they used an empty garbage can to take water from a nearby ditch and pour it over the one burning victim they thought they could help, then pulled him free of the flames.

"They had determined they couldn't help the other two, so they did what they could for the third," Pasha said, quoting deputies who interviewed the two rescuers.

The small airport in the middle of the city caters to small, private planes.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office will investigate.